Blog 2012 – 03.29.2021

1854 Meet Kirsten, Chapter 2

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rX_3wZ1dTTICJNu–o56yP8uGpHGgrao/view?usp=drivesdk

1854 Meet Kirsten, Chapter 2

We are all immigrants. Even the First People came from someplace else As the ole song says, “This world is not my home, I am just a passing through.” The First People were in many ways wiser than many of us later arrivals. They did not presume to own the land, but saw themselves as stewards and sought to leave it as they had found it and so for over a thousand years it stayed pristine with nary a trace of their having reaped its bountiful harvest of wild game, fruits and vegetables. The lighter skinned Pilgrims would not have survived had not the native people taught them to grow maze (corn) that they had themselves developed over many seasons from grass seeds into a sustaining food crop.

Kirsten’s family like many families left Europe with the promise of rich farm land available in the New World. Wave after wave of immigrants have come and laid claim to this land. I find it ludicrous that the Roman Catholic Church and latter various European kings presumed to divide the whole world to those who bowed the knee to them as if they had the right and authority to give land grants to whomever they pleased. Deeds and land rights still trace their origins, many of them, to these original land grants. And as a seventies song says quite well, I think, we continue to pave paradise just so we can put up a parking lot, for it is all less about honoring earth’s bounty than it is about making a buck.

By far the most popular and prevailing religion in the new world goes by the name Capitalism and any other religions, Christianity and Socialism especially must conform to its norms or be labeled heresy. Capitalists have a big problem with Jesus casting the money changers out of the Temple and Karl Marx’s talk of redistribution of wealth makes them name his philosophy “Godless Communism.” Some think the laws passed in the nineteen-fifties to stamp and print “In God We Trust” on our money was more about money being our true God than honoring the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible.

Another old adage says, “You can’t take it with you.” Maybe so, but those who have it make the rules to insure their children and their children’s children will own the land and always get the lion’s share slice of the pie and others less and less. The American dream of getting ahead is as much a myth as becoming a star in Hollywood and as likely for the vast majority.

Not very encouraging, perhaps, but perhaps we have all gotten too caught up in this time and space adventure and failed to remember why we really came here in the first place. It was not to just play Monopoly, buy property, build houses and hotels, and to see who could amass the biggest pile of cash. It was to have a fun vacation like God in the movie Dogma who to came to the New Jersey seashore to play Skee-Ball.

The concept of “a working vacation” is to me as much an oxymoron as “multi-tasking.” One is either vacationing or working. One cannot do both at the same time for really we can only do one thing right at a time. If we try to do more they end up mostly being done half-assed and must be re-done which takes even longer than doing it right the first time and so seldom ever is corrected, so ta dah the mess gets bigger and bigger.

A worldly wise young girl in a movie I recently re-watched said, “heaven is right here” and when asked why it is so messed up said because we &$#@-ed it up. Amen to that. High time we took the time to un&$#@ it.

I do not have a problem using or hearing others use the four-letter word that I used other figures above to represent but just thought it might not be appropriate to use with Kirsten’s story.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FOEKS2mTTseExGhvWby7MyzuGZzVtOel/view?usp=drivesdk

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